Probing Interstellar Grain Growth Through Polarimetry in the Taurus Cloud Complex
Abstract
The optical and near-infrared (OIR) polarization of starlight is typically understood to arise from the dichroic extinction of that light by dust grains whose axes are aligned with respect to a local magnetic-field. The size distribution of the aligned-grain population can be constrained by measurements of the wavelength dependence of the polarization. The leading physical model for producing the alignment is radiative alignment-torques (RAT), which predicts that the most efficiently aligned grains are those with sizes larger than the wavelengths of light composing the local radiation field. Therefore, for a given grain-size distribution, the wavelength at which the polarization reaches a maximum (λmax) should correlate with the characteristic reddening along the line of sight between the dust grains and the illumination source. A correlation between λmax and reddening has been previously established for extinctions up to AV≈4 mag. We extend the study of this relationship to a larger sample of stars in the Taurus cloud complex, including extinctions AV>10 mag. We confirm the earlier results for AV<4 mag, but find that the λmax vs. AV relationship bifurcates above AV≈4 mag, with part of the sample continuing the previously observed relationship and the remaining part exhibiting a significantly steeper rise. We propose that the data exhibiting the steep rise represent lines-of-sight towards high density "clumps," where grain coagulation has taken place. We present RAT-based modeling supporting these hypotheses. These results indicate that multi-band OIR polarimetry is a powerful tool for tracing grain growth in molecular clouds, independent of uncertainties in the dust temperature and emissivity.